Two Minute Marketing

This quick audio summary is brought to you by Growth Geeks - On-Demand Marketers   5 Instagram Case Studies and What You Can Learn By Ethan on Socialinsight.io   Instagram has become one of the top engaging social media platforms for businesses. It gives business opportunities to share stories with a vast audience in an inspired, original, and creative environment. The ads were only available to large companies initially. But recently, the ability to run ads on Instagram has been opened up to everyone. Here are the 5 Instagram pilot case studies.   Bloom and Wild. Its Power Editor feature create their Instagram ads. What they did first is they took their existing email list and created a lookalike audience from it. Then, they tested their ad images by running a few low dollar campaigns postings like they normally do. But now, they would compare the engagement between the photos and whichever photo received most attention would be the one used for their main ad campaign. After choosing the winning ad, they scaled up the ad spend and added a strong CTA to their ads. The results, bouquet orders went up by 62% and saw many new customers commenting on their account and buying bouquets from their shop. Burt’s Bees. A small dollar physical product benefiting from Instagram. They promoted their new product line known as lip crayon line in Instagram, the goal was to expand awareness and increase ad recall. They targeted females between 18-24 in the US, then, delivered the ads to them that showcased their product and corresponded with the theme ‘Delight Your Lips.” The result, a 5-point lift in product awareness and 16-point lift in ad recall. Mercedez-Benz. When they launched the GLA, the first company’s SUV, they wanted to gain exposure in the new category. They decided they’d create engaging ads both on Instagram and Facebook for their followers and those that would see the ads. They’d reach out to photographers and ask them the question, “What would you pack in your GLA?” then a picture of what they would bring, but these items would be laid on custom GLA cargo mat to show how versatile the vehicle was for a weekend trip. Results, a 14pt lift in Mercedez-Benz Instagram ads, a 54% increase in website visits from Instagram and Facebook branding ads, 580% increase in website visits when Facebook and Instagram ads were combined with Facebook direct response ads. PHILADELPHIA. A cheese brand, used very creative pictures to capture the hearts of foodies everywhere. Goals were to target the 25-40 yr olds females prone to throw a casual get together party. The results saw an 8pt lift in message association, 8pt lift in purchase and 41% sales uplift. Levi’s. This American retailer has been the idea of living in the moment, and they expressed this in photos. This helped them become the most recognized jeans in the world. Even so, they’re the first advertisers on Instagram. The first 9 days of their ads shows people wearing their iconic clothing and moments outdoors. The focus of the ads are on people within 18-34 yr olds in the US. The result, Levi’s reached 7.4 million people in the US and saw a 24 pt lift in ad recall.     That will do it for today's audio summary. Feeling inspired by these tactics...? Then head on over to growthgeeks.com to get started.

This quick audio summary is brought to you by Growth Geeks - On-Demand Marketers   The Role of Statistical Significance in Growth Experiments By Guy A on Medium.com   The work of Ronald Fisher in the early 20th century is where the concept of experimental design and hypothesis testing originated from, as tool for rigorously testing validity of a hypothesis. Consider the classic lady tasting tea experiment, Fisher posited a scenario where a lady claimed that she could tell whether milk had been the first thing added to the cup of tea and so he had to run a test over 8 cups of tea where 4 of the cups of tea had milk added first and the remaining 4 had tea added first, and then having the lady pick the 4 cups of tea where milk had been added first. The lady could not differentiate between the cups of tea. Fisher will reject the null hypothesis in this case only if the lady correctly identified the correct 4 cups. It is highly unlikely that she was able to guess this out of pure chance and likely has the ability that she claimed she have.   The experiment was leaning towards deducing whether or not there was truth to the claim of the lady. This sort of testing and thinking became incredibly powerful and useful in the sciences, allowing scientists to run tests and clearly articulate what results were likely legitimate and which were just a result of random chance. This methodology became used in many contexts not only in academic disciplines but also in industries of medicine and manufacturing. It has been used now by people doing “growth hacking.”   This is a natural fit for this kind of work, it is easy to get the volume needed to hit statistical significance for many large web services. The predominant paradigm for running experiments in this field has been to borrow the same methodologies that have been used for running experiments with the same benchmarks for success which are passed down from the classical statistical lore even if it doesn’t make sense to use those benchmarks in every context. In most growth contexts, there are two type of experiments, those geared towards learning and those toward optimization.  Those geared towards learning, are learning experiments that follow statistical inference playbook as their purpose is to validate fundamental claims about the business and what direction it should head on what is to be correct with a high probability. Those geared towards optimization, are more prevalent in growth hacking contexts than experiments geared towards learning.   A major issue with using standard rules of statistical significance is when you work with a growth team and you want to iterate as quickly as possible and attain optimal values for different  parts of your application as soon as possible so that your team can reach your target growth goals. It’s important that growth teams understand the the level of statistical significance they use should be viewed as a variable they control. They should also understand the risk of taking lower level significance.   That will do it for today's audio summary. Feeling inspired by these tactics...? Then head on over to growthgeeks.com to get started.

This quick audio summary is brought to you by Growth Geeks - On-Demand Marketers   All Revenue is Not Created Equal: The Keys to the 10X Revenue Club By Bill Gurley on Abovethecrowd.com   Now, IPO market is blow wide open and the media is completely infatuated with the frothy trades in the late stage private markets. Investors and analysts should be careful because not all revenues are created equal.   So what drives true equity value? It is nearly impossible to predict with any accuracy what the long-term cash flows are for a given company, especially a company that’s young and uses an innovative and new business model. Knowing what a long term cash flow looks like will require knowledge of vast number of disparate future variables. DCF is an unruly variation tool for young companies. Not because of its theoretical framework but because we don’t have accurate inputs. Due to this difficulty with the DCF, investors use a handful of other shortcuts to determine variations. The common shortcuts are the “Price earnings ratio” and “Enterprise value to EBITDA.   Below are some of the key business characteristics that would be used to separate high quality revenue companies from low quality revenue companies. Sustainable competitive advantage The presence of network effects. Visibility/predictability are highly valued. Customer lock-in/ High switching costs. Gross margin levels. Marginal profitability calculation. Customer concentration. Major partner dependencies. Organic demand vs. Heavy marketing spend. Growth. The 10x Club. These are the 10 business characteristics that can impact a company’s chances of making it into the 10x+price/revenue multiple club. Some of these are interdependent, clearly a company or two may not have every single characteristics, and they still make the club. Here are a few additions to the list. Capital expenditure intensity. Cash flow earnings. Optionality. TAM (Total Available Market) That will do it for today's audio summary. Feeling inspired by these tactics...? Then head on over to growthgeeks.com to get started.

This quick audio summary is brought to you by Growth Geeks - On-Demand Marketers Evergreen Content: How Updating An Old Post Boosted Page views by 468% By Benjamin Brandall on Ahrefs.com How do you post your old articles to the top of Google? First, update your article with fresh information. Rewrite sections that are out of date or fix broken links. Second, make sure your on-page optimization is absolutely perfect. Third, give your updated article a round of good old promotion, build links to it. Below are the results of it:     Rewrite tiny sections of the article. You can change the title and include the keywords you wanted to claw back.  Add a new paragraph of content, correct a few spelling errors. Change the publishing date and bump it to the top of your blog. Change the publishing date to the day you edit it to show Google that it is an updated page, make it visible to people who land on your blog page. Update your SEO Metadata. Just like all the other things, you have to update your SEO metadata. Make sure you have the keywords and description updated. Promote it like a new article. Post to your usual content promotion process. Send an email to your blog list and share it on your social media accounts with Buffer. Track rank dropping over time and check your weekly digest email, this will show you which of your pages need more effort if they’re going to keep bringing you in the same traffic.   Your Quick-Action Checklist for Switching from Unoptimized to Evergreen Content.  Here is a checklist to run-through each time you get that worrying report telling you you’re steadily becoming irrelevant: Rewrite out-of-date paragraphs. Add links to your new content Update the title to include the keyword Update the slug to include the keyword Include the keyword in the first 100 words Mention it in at least one sub-heading Edit your metadata to include your target keyword Change the publishing date to today Bump it up onto the first page of your blog Email it to your subscribers Run your promotion process Keep a close eye on the rank over the next few days. That will do it for today's audio summary. Feeling inspired by these tactics...? Then head on over to growthgeeks.com to get started.

This quick audio summary is brought to you by Growth Geeks - On-Demand Marketers   How a Small Team Iterated Rapidly by Running Up to 12 User Tests Per Week By Edmond Lau on Theeffectiveengineer.com   The continuous user testing technique is where we aggressively and iteratively run user tests to validate hypotheses plays a key role in guiding the design. The tests showed promising design choices and surfaced areas, that people found confusing and are sometimes confusing.   The Power of Continuous User Testing.  This provides two key benefits. First, it provides a powerful channel to quickly validate and build confidence that you are in the right direction. Gathering feedback from real users help grounds the reality. Second, discussions can be resolved  through persuasiveness of data from real users.   When to Leverage Continuous User Testing. This kind of testing is not free, the time we spend conducting and learning  from user tests is time not spent writing software. When we consider all these time spent tweaking and perfecting features that never get the adoption we want, it becomes clear that the earlier we make our course corrections, the less effort we waste and the bigger the impact we create.   When your A/B test falls short, it’s a good time to start the continuous user testing.  Strategy works very well when the desired impact is quantifiable and easy to measure. Although, sometimes the interactions we are trying to understand are too complex to distill into a single number. Measuring it would take a great amount of time and traffic to detect any meaningful difference.   Continuous user testing helps in these kind of situations by observing where users succeed and stumble, we gain a deeper understanding of user behavior that is not captured through high-level metrics. That can validate your intuition and your hypotheses, as well as surface unexpected sources of friction.   Interactions where users don’t require a large amount of context to understand what’s going on generally works for rapid user tests. For a more complex and power-user features of the product, you can rely heavily on beta testing with customers. Some of your ideas may not pan out, but continuous user testing will let you focus and ship the ones that did.   That will do it for today's audio summary. Feeling inspired by these tactics...? Then head on over to growthgeeks.com to get started.

This quick audio summary is brought to you by Growth Geeks - On-Demand Marketers   How to Run an Instagram Influencer Campaign By Tina Hsu on Keyhole.co.   Here’s a step by step guide to help you launch your own successful Instagram influencer campaign.     Devise a Campaign Plan and Follow Through. Always devise an outline before adding your content. Campaigns are just the same as the writing process, having no clear plan, it might just veer off and lose focus. While having a well thought framework will help you determine the exact steps you need to achieve your end result. Find Influencers Who Align with Your Brand - Make a List. Don’t pick influencers just because they are popular. Find the right influencers for the right audience. Explore keywords or pages that are related to your campaign or business. Also try looking for influencers with more than a 100k followers. But remember, a high number of followers doesn’t really correlate to high engagement on the Instagram account. Reach for the Stars. Reach out and ask to collaborate. Explain that you wish to launch an Instagram campaign to promote your business and you would love to have them advertise for you. You may ask them to send you a quote if they’re interested. But be clear with your expectations, explain what your company does and what the campaign is about. Keep everything as short as possible. Create a Landing Page. Make it simple and clear, including an opt-in form that your influencers can share on their Instagram accounts. The goal is not to sell your products but to attract new leads. Also offer valuable incentives to attract potential customers and have them share their contact information. Now’s the Time - Launch Your Campaign! Come up with a creative hashtag. There are 3 steps you can take to maximize results in the Instagram post that your influencers will share.   Attractive picture Caption with strong call to action Share the link of your landing page   Analyze Your Campaign Result. Conduct a thorough analysis to measure how well your campaign has met your goals in your outline. Two metrics you need to measure are the reach and engagement of your campaign. Instagram Influencer Marketing may seem like an easy job, but a lot of planning and research goes on behind the scenes.   That will do it for today's audio summary. Feeling inspired by these tactics...? Then head on over to growthgeeks.com to get started.

People Don’t Buy Products, They Buy Better Versions of Themselves   When Steve Jobs invented the iPod, everyone thought what could be so different with it from all the other MP3 players. One of the key aspects was how Jobs marketed and presented it. iPod: 1,000 Songs in Your Pocket. When everyone else was saying 1Gb storage on your MP3 player and telling about the product, Apple went on making you a better person by having 1,000 songs in your pocket.   There has always been a struggle to know the difference between the features and benefits and how people talk about using it in marketing. Some says to use benefits instead of the features. So we have explored this by looking up some examples of companies who do this well.   Feature vs Benefits – How to Grasp the Difference. Features are the “what” of your product or service, this is what your product does, while the benefits are the “why,” it’s what the customers can do with your product.   Some Great Examples of Companies Making You a Better Version of Yourself.  It would be useful to take a look at some well-known companies who uses benefits in their marketing strategies.   Evernote: Remember Everything. It offers you features to let you save and organize things. It is what you can do with Evernote.   Twitter: Start a conversation, explore your interests, and be in the know. Each of these three things is something that you can do with twitter, it’s not a feature or a product.   Nest Thermostat: Saving energy is a beautiful thing. It tells you what the biggest benefit is, saving energy.   LinkedIn: Be great at what you do. It has gone further by referencing their customers in their tagline. Making it clear that the idea is you’ll be great at what you do if you use LinkedIn. It’s very customer-focused.   GitHub: Build software better, together. It has a really obvious and popular benefit, features don’t even play a part in the tagline. That does it for today. Go checkout blog.buffer.com for the full article.

A Guide to SaaS Metrics and Your Pricing Strategy: Eliminating Churn In SaaS or any monthly recurring revenue business, customer retention is very critical to sustaining growth and maximizing profits. Churning customers not only waste you CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), but they also eliminate an opportunity to profit. So how do you reduce and eliminate this churn? Simple, provide customers enough value through your service to ensure you retain them. Why is Customer Retention So Important? Because when customers churn, you waste all the money you spend on customer acquisition. You would want to ensure that they stick around so you can see a full return on your investment and generate the monthly recurring revenue needed to be profitable. With pricing, the LTV (Life Time Value) of your customers can indicate how well you’re positioning, packaging, and pricing are aligned to the needs of your customers. How Do I Calculate Churn and LTV? To determine your customers’ churn rate, divide the number of customers who churned by the number of customers acquired in the same month. Your average revenue per user and monthly growth in ARPA can be acquired by looking at the numbers in the given period of time. The key is establishing a high enough LTV so it surpasses your CAC. How Do I Reduce Churn and Optimize LTV?    Align your price along a value metric.    Assign a customer persona to each product tier.    Determine price sensitivity. These are all critical factors that can either send your churn skyrocketing or keep the same rate in the negative. Keep in mind that many aspects of pricing strategy can have a massive influence on the numbers. The key to retaining customers and increasing profitability is to find balance between providing enough value through your product and charging appropriate price for your business. That does it for today. Go checkout priceintelligently.com for the full article.